T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets

So, I read a review of a book about Eliot's poem "Four Quartets" in this issue of Touchstone, and the review of the book about the poem was so compelling, that I went to my bookshelf, got down my book of Eliot's poetry, and spent a couple of nursing sessions rereading "Four Quartets."

The poem is about time, and mortality, and sanctity. All and all, a fitting meditation for a homemaker.

The Touchstone article (written by Franklin Freeman) quotes the book it's reviewing (Eliot's Edifice: Dove Descending in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, by Thomas Howard) as saying that the poem "is about sanctity, the Way (up or down) by which we mortals may finally win through to the Beatific Vision. No other 'reading' of the poem will do justice to Eliot's work here."


I have little to add to that, except to say: read the poem. Read Touchstone. And, probably, if you can find it, read Howard's book. Then read the poem again.

"the rest/Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action." Hunh.


Off to pray, observe, be disciplined, think and act,
and pay attention to the hints,
Jessica

baked eggs in tomato cups

They're good! Really! Check it out!


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

public service announcement

So, this morning at 5 am, I woke my husband up and asked him to get me some milk and Advil. Why? Because I had a killer headache, bad enough that it'd woken me up in the middle of a dream. Why did I have a killer headache?

'Cause I got a tetanus booster yesterday. And boy, let me tell you, I'm sympathizing with my kids and their vaccine schedule. No wonder they're cranky when they get their shots.

Anyway, though tetanus is such a wicked disease that it's almost worse to recover from than it is to die from, the other part of the booster was maybe even more important. What I really got was a tetanus-diptheria-whooping-cough booster. My doctor pointed out that, as a parent of young children, it was extra-important to keep my vaccinations up to date. Apparently, when kids get some of these nasty diseases these days, the people they get them from are their parents. Parents who've let their immunizations lapse. And whooping cough, at least, is still making the rounds.

So, anyway, next time you're in for that yearly physical, make sure to check and see if you need a booster shot. It may not be fun, but it's better than seeing your kid die in agony.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Frugal Friday: buying discounted plants

Maybe they don't do it everywhere, but at the Lowe's near my house, if you go all the way to the back (or, sometimes, tucked just to the right of the entrance at the front) of the garden section, you'll find a big moveable shelf full of discounted plants. They're usually more than half off - often $2 for a nice, mature plant.

Sometimes, these plants are pretty much done for the world. But, often, the only thing wrong with them is that they are done flowering. They're not at the height of prettiness anymore, and so Lowe's can't sell them for full price.

I love, love, love, looking through this shelf. I've found verbena, flowering sage (salvia), ivy and more.

The trick to buying discounted plants, at Lowe's or wherever they sell them in your area, I've found, is to buy perennials and not annuals. The annuals are probably pretty much done (though, if you're a greener thumb than me, maybe you can coax them into blossoming again before the season is over). But the perennials, of course, you can deadhead, feed, water, and enjoy for years. I have a pot of red, white and purple verbena that went on sale after the fourth of July that's flowering beautifully and abundantly.


The other fun thing you can sometimes find there are the gift plants that have started to go bad. You know, the ones that have been planted to look extremely beautiful for a week or two, but then crowd themselves out because they've been planted too closely in too small a pot. I got a three pot gift package of ivy that had about nine little ivy plants in each four inch pot! No wonder it was dying! But take it home, separate the plants, repot them - and, wow, that's a lot of ivy for $3.


Anyway, hopefully you can find a store nearby with a similar, possibility-laden shelf!



peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

bother!

And I was so determined not to miss it!

I've been terrible about remembering to celebrate saints' days, but I was convinced that I would remember St. Mark's this week. Alas, today is NOT the 24th, and so St. Mark's feast day is not tomorrow, but yesterday.

All the same, praise God for St. Mark, evangelist! Go take a peek through his gospel, and just try to count all of the "suddenly!"'s. It's like the Herman kid's account of the appearance of the angel in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: "Suddenly, out of the black night, SHAZAM!" I've heard Mark's gospel called "the comic book gospel", and that's not a bad description. Lots of action. For a world that sometimes sees Christianity as dull, Mark's gospel is a good antidote. In it, we see Christ actively loving his people who he has come to save.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

in the garden

There are cucumber seeds in the dirt! I just couldn't bring myself to pay $3 for a cucumber plant when I could pay less than $2 for a whole packet of seeds. Even though the cucumber plant in question was one of those yummy lemon cucumbers.

I've got tiny thyme seedlings and tiny forget-me-not seedlings coming up! (Does anyone else ever look at all those flats of bright, blossoming annuals at the home improvement stores and think, "Yeah, but if you buy those, you miss all the fun!" I mean, they're beautiful plants, but you didn't get to watch them grow, to peek every morning to see if they were poking their little green heads out of the dirt, to peek again to see if there were any blossoms and if maybe, maybe, maybe today was the day those blossoms were going to open!)

I found some cool new plants at a discount, including a poisonous one that is NOT going to stay in the backyard where I put it because, well, it's poisonous, and my kids have a habit of sticking things in their mouths. Hooray for the ability to search the web for plant info! (It's a Natal Plum. Apparently the fruit is edible but the rest of it, including the seeds inside the fruit, is not.)

The sunflowers at the front of the house, which are not getting enough sun, are terribly spindly-lookin'. The ones at the back, which are getting enough sun, are looking hardier, but a little bug-eaten.

The small green tomatoes on my Early Girls are getting less and less small. Mmmm, I can almost taste them now. I think tomatoes you grow yourself are as good as apples when it comes to snacking.

My neighbor's loquat tree has very graciously draped itself across our back fence, and we're enjoying the fruits of its labors. Yum.


I wouldn't have guessed a year ago that I'd ever enjoy gardening this much. I feel more greenhorn than greenthumb, because I just don't know that much about plants yet, but in some ways, it's a glorious hobby in which to be an amateur. There're so many plants that are forgiving of mistakes, and just grow their hearts out no matter what you do to them. And they're so pretty and fragrant and heart-lifting.

Seriously, there is something world-resettingly right about gardening. I think it's 'cause we were made to be in gardens, from the very beginning. This daughter of Eve is content to go back to that life, at least sometimes.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

WFMW: Miracle-Gro

Okay, I don't mean to sound like a corporate shill here (and I'm not - I'm not connected in any way with the company), but man! that stuff works!

I have an ivy plant that I grew from my wedding bouquet. My sister has a similar one, grown from her wedding bouquet. We both got the cuttings for our bouquets from plants my mom grew from the ivy from her bouquet.

While I did manage to keep my plant alive for the first year and a half of our marriage, I didn't manage to do much more than that. So when I went over to my sister's house, and saw the big, beautiful plant her cutting had grown into, I was shocked. Especially since she got marriage a year after I did, and so my plant had been growing a lot longer than hers.

"How did you get it so big?" I asked.

My sister gave me that "you're a bit of a weirdo, Jess" look and said, "Um, I fed it?"

Ah.

And that was the start of my love affair with Miracle-Gro. Just the nice, blue powder form at first. I put a scoop in the bottom of my watering can every week, and, lo-and-behold, my ivy plant grew. It's huge now.

Then I discovered that Miracle-Gro makes potting soil. Folks, they're not kidding about bigger and better plants. The comparison of the tomatoes I grow in their potting soil to the ones I grow in my garden soil? Thick, dark green stalks next to puny, pale ones. ('course, my garden soil's pretty sad stuff . . . I'm working on it.)

So, someday, I want to be a super-cool, composting, organic-soil-amendment making greenthumb. But till then? Miracle-Gro: works for me!


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

p.s. the picture is of my wading pool garden as of yesterday (Miracle-Gro soil, y'see). As you can see, the cosmos are blooming. As you probably can't, the zinnias are about to (there are buds! yay!). The bachelor's buttons, to my sorrow, don't seem to have any plans on flowering in the near future.

Below is a picture of the cosmos from the wading pool garden (along with some flowers from my side yard) doing their duty on our kitchen table. Food tastes better with eye candy like that, no?